Harbord Health and Wellness Disclaimers
These Disclaimers are part of the Harbord Terms of Service.
1. Harbord Is Not Medical Advice
Harbord is a self-help tool. Everything in it, including the lessons, the audio, the exercises, the prompts, and the tracking features, is general educational and informational content. It is not medical advice, mental health advice, addiction treatment advice, nutritional advice, or professional advice of any kind, and it is not tailored to you.
The App does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition, including substance use disorder, alcohol use disorder, anxiety, depression, or any other physical or mental health condition. It has not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and it is not a medical device.
2. No Professional Relationship
Using Harbord does not create a doctor-patient, therapist-client, counselor-client, coach-client, sponsor, or any other professional or fiduciary relationship between you and the publisher of the App or anyone who contributed content to it. Nobody involved in making the App is your treatment provider, and nobody is providing you individual clinical judgment.
Always talk to a physician, licensed therapist, licensed addiction counselor, or other qualified professional about your own situation. Never disregard professional advice, or delay getting it, because of something you read, heard, or did in the App.
3. Harbord Is Not a Crisis Service and Does Not Monitor You
Nobody is watching. The App does not monitor what you enter, does not read your journal or your recordings, does not analyze your entries for risk, does not alert anyone, and cannot summon help. Nothing you type or record reaches the publisher, a clinician, a moderator, or any other person.
Do not use the App to ask for help in an emergency, and do not rely on it to notice that you are in trouble.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
If you are thinking about suicide or self-harm, or are in crisis for any reason, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day.
For free, confidential help finding substance use treatment, call SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357), available 24 hours a day.
These are independent services. They are not operated by, staffed by, affiliated with, or paid for by us, and we are not responsible for their availability, their advice, or their conduct.
4. Withdrawal, Detox, and Medication
This is the most important safety point in this document.
Suddenly stopping or sharply cutting back on some substances can cause severe medical harm and can be fatal. That is particularly true of alcohol, benzodiazepines, and barbiturates, and it can be true of others. Withdrawal from some substances requires medical supervision.
Harbord cannot assess your situation and cannot tell you whether it is safe for you to stop, reduce, or change your use of any substance. Nothing in the App should be read as encouragement to stop using without medical supervision, to stop taking prescribed medication, or to alter a treatment plan. If you are considering stopping or reducing use, talk to a medical professional first about how to do that safely.
The App does not give any advice about medication, including medications used to treat substance use disorder. Decisions about medication belong to you and your prescriber.
5. Relapse and Reduced Tolerance
The App includes content for users who have used after a period of not using. That content includes a safety point that is worth repeating here: tolerance drops during a period of not using, and returning to a previous dose or amount after time away carries a serious risk of overdose, including fatal overdose.
This information is general. It is not a dosing guideline, not permission to use, and not a substitute for emergency care. If you or someone near you may be overdosing, call 911 immediately.
6. No Promises About Results
We make no claim, promise, or guarantee that Harbord will help you get through a craving, avoid using, reduce use, stay sober, improve your mental health, or reach any other outcome. Recovery is individual, results vary widely, and the App is one small tool among many.
Any story, example, or testimonial in the App or in our marketing describes one person's experience and is not typical, promised, or predictive of what will happen for you. We do not present clinical evidence of effectiveness and we do not claim any.
7. Educational Content, and How It Was Made
The educational lessons and audio in the App draw on general, publicly available information about recovery, craving, and coping. They are written for a general audience. They may be incomplete, may become out of date, and may not fit your circumstances. We do not warrant that any of it is accurate, current, or applicable to you.
The written lessons are original material written by Harbord's founder, who holds a Master of Social Work degree. They are not AI-generated. She is not a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, she is not acting as a social worker, therapist, or counselor in writing them, and writing them creates no professional relationship with you. The lessons are general educational material written for everyone who uses the App. They are not clinical advice, not treatment, and not tailored to your situation. The guided meditations and visualizations are narrated by a synthetic voice produced with text-to-speech software. It is not a human narrator and it is not a clone of any identifiable person.
None of that content is clinically validated, peer reviewed, or endorsed by any medical or professional body, and none of it was produced by a licensed clinician acting in a clinical capacity. It is general reading and listening material, not care.
Nothing in the App is generated in response to you. Every user sees the same lessons and hears the same recordings. No AI reads, listens to, analyzes, or responds to anything you enter, and nothing you enter is sent to any AI service.
8. Guided Audio, Breathing, and Grounding Exercises
Do not use guided audio, meditations, visualizations, breathing exercises, or grounding exercises while driving, operating machinery, cycling, swimming, or doing anything else that requires your attention. Some breathing exercises can cause lightheadedness, dizziness, or fainting. Stop immediately if you feel unwell, and talk to a medical professional before using them if you have a respiratory condition, a cardiovascular condition, a seizure disorder, are pregnant, or have any history of dissociation, panic, or trauma-related symptoms that these exercises could trigger.
9. Outside Organizations and Meeting Links
The App links to the official meeting-finder pages of independent recovery organizations. We do not run, control, host, verify, vet, or endorse those organizations, their meetings, their content, or their volunteers, and we are not affiliated with any of them. Listing an organization does not mean that organization has reviewed or approved the App. Meeting information may be wrong or out of date. What happens at a meeting, and any contact you have with any outside organization or its members, is entirely between you and them.
Names of outside organizations are used only to identify them so that you can find them.
10. The Sobriety Commitment Is Not a Legal Contract
The App may invite you to sign a personal statement about choosing recovery. That is a promise to yourself. It is not a legal contract, it creates no legal obligation for anyone, and it cannot be enforced by us, by you, by a family member, an employer, a treatment program, a probation officer, or a court. Nothing happens if you do not sign it, and nothing happens if you sign it and later change your mind. It stays on your device.
11. Your Journal, Your Recordings, and Your Contacts
The App is a place to write and record honestly, and it is built so that nothing you put in it leaves your device. That also means the App will not act on anything you write. If you write that you are in danger, nobody will see it.
Emergency contacts you add are a shortcut to call or text people you have chosen. Adding someone as a contact does not notify them, does not enroll them in anything, and does not obligate them to respond. Ask the people you add whether they are willing to be there before you rely on them.
12. Your Responsibility
You are using this App on your own, without supervision. You are responsible for your own decisions about your health, your treatment, your safety, and when to get professional help. You understand that recovery is difficult, that relapse is common, and that no app can prevent it. You accept the risks of self-directed use.